Gene editing has always been a controversial topic so Jankui must have known there would be some backlash to his research but still chose to continue with such. I think he was just behaving as a researcher but maybe did not acknowledge or care to acknowledge the possible consequences of doing such testing with little known about the side effects. An ethicist at the University of Oxford stated that “this experiment exposes healthy normal children to risks of gene editing for no real necessary benefit” (Normile 2018). I would have to agree with this scientist in that we do not have enough knowledge about gene editing to impose this science on healthy babies. I do understand in order for science to advance risks have to be taken but I think there are alternate ways of testing that could be executed before we begin testing on healthy humans. In fact, Jankui failed to provide any past scientific evidence on “preclinical research on mice and monkeys” (Li 2019) which gives little reason to his confidence to test on healthy humans. I think we can learn from this situation and require more evidence to be provided before this type of testing is performed on embryos. This situation could be compared to another unethical science trial being the Tuskegee Syphilis Clinical Trial, where scientists observed mostly black men with syphilis and did not give them proper treatment or tell them exactly what they were being treated for (CDC 2020). The victims of these two studies are very different, Tuskegee being men and Genetic testing being babies, but both of these victims did not consent to be tested on. The people in the Tuskegee trial were not fully aware of what was being done to them and the embryos/babies were too young to consent to be a part of an unethical trial. These types of trials may make people feel distrust with the medical community and lead to people being afraid to be treated for their medical problems because they are afraid to be disrespected and experimented on.
CDC. (2020, March 2). Tuskegee Study - Timeline - CDC - NCHHSTP. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm
Li, J. (2019). Experiments that led to the first gene-edited babies: the ethical failings and the urgent need for better governance. J Zhejiang Univ Sci B. 20(1): 32-38. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6331330
Normile, D. (2018). CRISPR bombshell: Chinese researcher claims to have created gene-edited twins. Science mag. Retrieved from https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/crispr-bombshell-chinese-researcher-claims-have-created-gene-edited-twins